As Black returned home that night, I was confident he’d come again the next morning as promised and that he’d once again listen to me recount the stories that would constitute my book. I listened to his footsteps fading beyond the open gate; there was something to the cold night that seemed to make my sleepless and troubled murderer stronger and more devilish than me and my book.
I closed the courtyard gate tightly behind him. I placed the old ceramic water basin that I used as a basil planter behind the gate as I did each night. Before I reduced the stove to smoldering ashes and went to bed, I glanced up to see Shekure in a white gown looking like a ghost in the blackness.
“Are you absolutely certain that you want to marry him?” I asked.
“No, dear Father. I’ve long since forgotten about marriage. Besides, I am married.”
“If you still want to marry him, I’m willing to give you my blessing now.”
“I wish not to be wed to him.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s against your will. In all sincerity, I desire nobody that you do not want.”
I noticed, momentarily, the coals in the stove reflected in her eyes. Her eyes had aged, not out of unhappiness, but anger; yet there was no trace of offense in her voice.
“Black is in love with you,” I said as if divulging a secret.
“I know.”
“He listened to all I had to say today not out of his love of painting, but out of his love for you.”
“He will complete your book, this is what matters.”
“Your husband might return one day,” I said.
“I’m not certain why, perhaps it’s the silence, but tonight I’ve realized once and for all that my husband will never return. What I’ve dreamt seems to be the truth: They must’ve killed him. He’s long since turned to dust.” She whispered the last statement lest the sleeping children hear. And she said it with a peculiar tinge of anger.
“If they happen to kill me,” I said, “I want you to finish this book to which I’ve dedicated everything. Swear that you will.”
“I give my word. Who will be the one to complete your book?”
“Black! You can ensure that he does so.”
“You are already ensuring that he does so, dear Father,” she said. “You have no need for me.”
“Agreed, but he’s giving in to me because of you. If they kill me, he might be afraid to continue on.”
“In that case, he won’t be able to marry me,” said my clever daughter, smiling.
Where did I come up with the detail about her smiling? During the entire conversation, I noticed nothing except an occasional glimmer in her eyes. We were standing tensely facing one another in the middle of the room.
“Do you communicate with each other, exchange signals?” I asked, unable to contain myself.
“How could you even think such a thing?”
A long agonizing silence passed. A dog barked in the distance. I was slightly cold and shuddered. The room was so black now that we could no longer see each other; we could each only sense the other’s presence. We abruptly embraced with all our might. She began to cry, and said that she missed her mother. I kissed and stroked her head, which indeed smelled like her mother’s hair. I walked her to her bedchamber and put her to bed next to the children who were sleeping side by side. And as I reflected back over the last two days, I was certain that Shekure had corresponded with Black.
I AM CALLED BLACK
When I returned home that night, ably evading my landlady-who was beginning to act like my mother-I sequestered myself in my room and lay on my mattress, giving myself over to visions of Shekure.
Allow me the amusement of describing the sounds I’d heard in Enishte’s house. On my second visit after twelve years, she didn’t show herself. She did succeed, however, in so magically endowing me with her presence that I was certain of being, somehow, continually under her watch, while she sized me up as a future husband, amusing herself all the while as if playing a game of logic. Knowing this, I also imagined I was continually able to see her. Thus was I better able to understand Ibn Arabi’s notion that love is the ability to make the invisible visible and the desire always to feel the invisible in one’s midst.
I could infer that Shekure was continually watching me because I’d been listening to the sounds coming from within the house and to the creaking of its wood boards. At one point, I was absolutely certain she was with her children in the next room, which opened onto the wide hallway-cum-anteroom; I could hear the children pushing, shoving and sparring with each other while their mother, perhaps, tried to quiet them with gestures, threatening glances and knit brows. Once in a while I heard them whispering quite unnaturally, not as one would whisper to avoid disturbing someone’s ritual prayers, but affectedly, as one would before erupting in a fit of laughter.
Another time, as their grandfather was explaining to me the wonders of light and shadow, Shevket and Orhan entered the room, and with careful gestures obviously rehearsed beforehand, proffered a tray and served us coffee. This ceremony, which should’ve been Hayriye’s concern, was arranged by Shekure so they could observe the man who might soon become their father. And so, I paid a compliment to Shevket: “What nice eyes you have.” Then, I immediately turned to his younger brother, Orhan-sensing that he might grow jealous-and added, “Yours are as well.” Next, I placed a faded red carnation petal, which I’d fast produced from the folds of my robe, onto the tray and kissed each boy on the cheeks. Later still, I heard laughter and giggling from within.
Frequently, I grew curious to know from which hole in the walls, the closed doors, or perhaps, the ceiling, and from which angle, her eye was peering at me. Staring at a crack, knot or what I took to be a hole, I’d imagine Shekure situated just behind it. Suddenly, suspecting another black spot, and to determine whether I was justified in my suspicion-even at the risk of being insolent toward my Enishte as he continued his endless recital-I’d stand up. Affecting all the while the demeanor of an attentive disciple, quite enthralled and quite lost in thought, in order to demonstrate how intent I was upon my Enishte’s story, I’d begin pacing in the room with a preoccupied air, before approaching that suspicious black spot on the wall.
When I failed to find Shekure’s eye nesting in what I had taken to be a peephole, I’d be overcome by disappointment, and then by a strange feeling of loneliness, by the impatience of a man uncertain where to turn next.
Now and then, I’d experience such an abrupt and intense feeling that Shekure was watching me, I’d be so absolutely convinced I was within her gaze, that I’d start posing like a man trying to show he was wiser, stronger and more capable than he really was so as to impress the woman he loved. Later, I’d fantasize that Shekure and her boys were comparing me with her husband-the boys’ missing father-before my mind would focus again upon whichever variety of famous Venetian illustrator about whose painting techniques my Enishte was waxing philosophic at the moment. I longed to be like these newly famed painters solely because Shekure had heard so much about them from her father; illustrators who had earned their renown-not through suffering martyrdom in cells like saints, or through severing the heads of enemy soldiers with a mighty arm and a sharp scimitar, as that absent husband had done-but on account of a manuscript they’d transcribed or a page they’d illuminated. I tried very hard to imagine the magnificent pictures created by these celebrated illustrators, who were, as my Enishte explained, inspired by the power of the world’s mystery and its visible blackness. I tried so hard to visualize them-those masterpieces my Enishte had seen and was now attempting to describe to one who had never laid eyes on them-that, finally, when my imagination failed me, I felt only more dejected and demeaned.